Preoperative prediction of lymph node status in oral squamous cell carcinoma: value of quantitative dual-energy CT
Fengqiong Huang1, Xiaohua Ban2, Yusong Jiang1
1Department of Radiology, Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, People's Republic of China.
Objectives:
The objective of this study was to explore whether parameters of dual-energy computed tomography (DECT) could help evaluate the status of cervical lymph nodes (LNs) in patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC).
Study Design:
Pathological and DECT parameters of patients with OSCC who underwent cervical lymph node dissection from December 2021 to December 2022 were collected. Quantitative DECT parameters of the primary lesions, including the slope of the spectral Hounsfield unit curve (λHU), iodine concentration (IC), electron density (Rho), normalized iodine concentration (NIC), and effective atomic number (Zeff), were measured between patients with different lymph node status (the presence of LN metastasis, lymph node ratio [LNR], and lymph node burden [LNB]). The receiver operating characteristic curves and logistic regression analysis were used to evaluate the diagnostic performance and the independent parameters, respectively.
Results:
The independent predictor for the detection of LN metastasis was λHU in venous phase, with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.812. The mean precontrast Zeff was higher in the high metastatic LNB group than the low metastatic LNB group. The precontrast Zeff was the independent predictor of high LNR with an AUC of 0.726.
Conclusions:
DECT quantitative parameters of the primary lesions can facilitate the evaluation of cervical LN status.
